Dragonfire Page 3

  “Where did you even learn those words?” She asked with mild surprise, trying to remove her hand from the phone in her robe pocket as if the thought of Instagramming their tea together hadn’t occurred to her for a moment.

  “A wise man learns much… about his friends and his enemies…” Honda pointed out, a momentary sharpness in his tone now as he placed two small, bowl-like cups on the table next to the kettle. “These things you teenagers do now with your phones may be media, but it is anything but social: friends are those who are real… not those who ‘like’ your photographs but never show you their true selves. But, enough of this…” he continued with a soft growl and a shake of his head, realising he had slipped off-topic. “Of course, you may still come and practice whenever you wish: you will always be welcome here.” He slid down into the chair opposite hers, the steaming kettle between them. “All I am saying to you today is that is that I am getting no younger, and that you have come as far as I can take you.”

  “Is there no more to learn, Sensei…?”

  “There is always more to learn, child!” He snapped quickly in reply. “What I teach here is not some registered kendo class, Tatsuko: here there is no striving for the next Dan before a panel of judges. What I teach will never win awards or trophies...” he added shrewdly, fixing her with a strangely intense gaze for a moment, “…but remember what you’ve learned, and when the time comes it may save your life. You still hold back on your strikes against me, for example, although I doubt you do this consciously. You will need to master such things and more if you are to grow into the master swordsman you are destined to become…” he advised cryptically, leaving her torn between the meaning behind his words and pride over what had clearly been a great compliment.

  “Sensei…” she began searchingly, completely confused now.

  “Tatsuko-chan, there is no need to call me ‘teacher’ any longer,” he observed kindly, bowing his head as a sign of respect. “We may speak as equals now… as friends… if that is your wish…” he added quickly, ever aware of the difference in gender and the staggering age gap.

  Never before had Nev heard Honda attach that diminutive suffix to the name he’d given her. In Japanese culture, the addition of ‘-Chan’ to someone’s name when addressing them was an indication that the speaker considered the other party a friend or equal, as Honda had just indicated, and Nev instinctively understood the significance of the subtle shift that had just taken place in their five-year relationship as pupil and instructor.

  “You do me a great honour, Yoshihiro-san,” she replied eventually, rising quickly to her feet and also executing a short bow, but ultimately unable to bring herself to use an honorific of similar familiarity. She instead elected for a more formal type of address that suggested equality of a more conservative nature.

  “It has been my honour to be your teacher,” he declared with a smile and a sudden slap of his palm on the table top that made her flinch just a little. “You have been a perfect student, these five years. Not only have you learned and mastered every combination of moves that I have taught you, you have also made every effort to follow the tradition of my teachings. You have acknowledged me as your master and have always shown the required level of respect. This, I did not expect from a ‘Westerner’. Along with the training I have given you, you have indulged my lectures, and through them – I hope – you have also learned the importance of Bushido…”

  “Righteousness, compassion, respect, duty and loyalty, integrity, heroic courage, honour and self-control… these are the Way of the Samurai…” she declared with a single nod, well aware of each of the eight virtues and emphasising those she knew Honda personally considered most important.

  Had he asked her to recite them again in Japanese, Honda knew she could’ve done that too, with perfect inflection. Either in spite of her family history – or perhaps because of it – Nev Anderson was meticulous when it came to learning, something unusual in a modern teenager that was to be applauded and encouraged. He knew that she also excelled at her high school studies for the same reason.

  “Because of this…” he continued with a nod of his own, “…and because it is your birthday…” he added, rising from his chair and causing her to blush inexplicably as she realised something unexpected was afoot “…I have this small token to give…” And with that, he lifted the wrapped package from the bench behind him and turned back toward her, arms outstretched just as they had been earlier than morning, the solemn offering to her this time instead of his ancestors.

  She moved quickly around the table as she recognised the ceremonial manner in which he was presenting it to her. Without a single word, fighting to keep any emotion from her expression, Nev bowed deeply and then reached out and carefully accepted the gift from him with similar solemnity, both of them bowing again to each other in turn at the conclusion of the exchange.

  It was wrapped simply in a single layer of brown paper, and she could feel the smooth wood of the box beneath. It was heavier than she expected a wooden sword to be – several kilograms at least – although she reasoned that the added weight of the box itself probably had something to do with that.

  “A new bokken, Sensei… Yoshihiro-san…?” She asked, finding that old habits definitely died hard but correcting herself quickly.

  “Something… you will find useful,” he suggested with a tilt of his head, completely avoiding the question as a faint, almost impish smile flickered across his face in that moment. “All I ask is that you do not open until after school…”

  “Oh, no way…! You, too…?” She protested, the combination of sudden excitement and dismay over the unexpected gift causing her to lose any show of formality. “I can’t open it now…? Sensei, you can’t be serious?”

  “This is all I ask…” he replied, steadfast. “You go to your friend’s house after school, yes…? Take it with you and you may open it then. You may ignore my request, of course, but I do not believe you would show such disrespect.”

  “Now you’re not playing fair…!” She grumped, well aware that he was using emotional blackmail and not happy about it. “Just for that…” she added, deciding to return fire in her own way, “…you’re going to have to let me take a selfie with you…!”

  “I do not believe in such foolishness!” He protested immediately, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand.

  “It’s either that, or I open the present now, Yoshihiro-san…” she pressed on, determined to win this battle at least. “Which is it to be?”

  “This is unseemly…!” He snapped grumpily, but she knew she’d won in that moment and she was by his side in an instant, the phone already miraculously in her hand and at the ready.

  “Smile for the camera…!” She directed brightly, holding the phone at arm’s length and leaning in until her face was next to his. It took some effort: although she was little more than average height herself, she was still at least a half-head taller than her diminutive, elderly instructor.

  “Omae ikareteru…!” He muttered sourly under his breath; but at the same time, just as millions of others were probably doing at that very moment around the world, he swallowed his pride and a affected an obviously-fake smile just long enough to allow the ‘crazy person’ beside him to take the picture.

  “Now, that is going on Instagram…!” She declared, triumphant in having finally been allowed her first selfie with him in the five years they’d trained together. “See…!” She added, holding the screen up to show him as her phone chirped loudly. “Perce already likes it…!”

  “I have trained a demon child…!” Honda decided, at least partly joking. “Away with you now… you have school to attend…!”

  She’d returned home just long enough to have a quick shower, get ready for school and hang out the load of laundry that had finished while she was out. With her own lunch also prepared the night before, it was a simple enough task to pack that into her duffel bag with a few school books, her dad’s present, the Bluetooth
speaker and the still-wrapped gift Honda had given her. She wondered for a moment if perhaps she should leave behind the new bokken – it had to be a bokken, after all – but she wouldn’t be back home for hours and she really wanted to open at least one major present while it was still daylight.

  Taking it with her wasn’t the problem it could’ve been at most schools. Her kenjutsu training was well known and the principal himself had given tacit approval for her to keep her practice equipment in her bag or in her locker, including bokken, just so long as they remained there throughout the day. There’d never been a problem before, and she didn’t see any reason for there to be one today, of all days.

  “It’s not like it’s a real sword or anything…” she muttered softly to herself, slinging the now-heavy bag over her shoulders and heading out the door again for the second time that morning.

  At her school, Year-Twelves were at least permitted smart casual dress, allowing them to stand apart from the serviceably frumpy uniforms they’d been forced to wear the last five years running. That morning, she’d decided to make a special effort to dress up in honour of her own birthday, and had broken out some of her best clothes as a result: a lace-panelled, white peplum top with a beige mini-skirt, worn over brown leggings and matching slouchy calf boots in suede. Over all that she shrugged on her prized dark brown, double-breasted woollen jacket, hip-length and belted at the waist. It wasn’t quite snug enough to be considered ‘figure-hugging’, but it was undeniably flattering nevertheless.

  It was a favourite outfit that she only wore on special occasions; one of a few special combinations in her wardrobe that had taken a long time and a lot of extra shifts at the local McDonald’s to pay for. Her dad worked hard to keep them housed and to put food on the table, but a truck driver’s wage only went so far and she’d decided early that if she wanted any treats or luxuries that lay beyond the scope of their limited budget, the best way to get anything special was to pay for it herself.

  From the moment she’d been old enough to legally work, Nev had done exactly that at the local burger franchise, working as many shifts as she could get to buy herself clothes, shoes and other accessories, and to also take some of the burden off her dad’s shoulders by contributing where she could, like paying her own phone plan and contributing to utilities like gas and electricity and the monthly internet bill (which she mostly used in any case).

  The school morning had passed exactly as it had on countless other weekdays, with her working hard at her classwork or studying intently until the bell sounded to signal the end of each period, at which point hundreds of students simultaneously stampeded to wherever their next class was, beginning the whole cycle all over again. There’d been the obligatory collection of birthday greetings from a dozen or so of her closer school friends – all of them female – but otherwise there was little to report of any interest. The only minor exception to that routine came during French, one of only two classes this year that she shared with Persephone Koutroulis, her best friend in the entire school (or anywhere else, for that matter).

  Persephone had turned eighteen a few months earlier and was already thinking hard about life beyond school, with most of her plans revolving around becoming extremely rich and powerful without being required to do lots of anything resembling actual work. Percy was of above-average height and thin as a reed, and Nev had to admit (if backed into the jealousy corner and poked with a stick) that her best friend was quite attractive in her own, slightly off-centre way. Where Nev had turned to martial arts and athletics as a young teen, Percy had instead taken ballet lessons for years, and somehow always seemed to glide across the floor rather than actually walk.

  Nev’s hair was a bright auburn colour, tending to a lighter reddish-brown when exposed to direct sunlight, and always seemed to have a mind of its own when it came to styling (leaving Nev with a fight on her hands most mornings), whereas Percy’s was long and flowing and hung about her Mediterranean features in lustrous locks that somehow never seemed out of place no matter how much (or little) preparation it received. As attractive as Nev might’ve been to any unbiased observer, she nevertheless secretly envied Percy for her dark, ‘mysterious’ looks and her incredible hair.

  Sharp, socially savvy and very clever, if not exceptionally smart in the classic sense, Percy might have been the most popular girl in school had it not been for the fact that there was something strange about her; something vague and undefinable that most people found a little ‘off’. She was friendly enough when she felt like it, but she generally chose not to hang out with the popular crowd (a form of social ‘suicide’ in itself, as Nev could personally attest) and instead spent a large part of her free time at school either in the library or a spare study room, reading books on folklore and mythology.

  Percy was obsessed with the idea of magic and dragons, and liked nothing better than to sit down with a good (or even not-so-good) fantasy novel or non-fiction work on the subject, or curl up in front of the TV watching movies of a similar ilk. It had been at Percy’s urging that Nev had first seen the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies, after which she’d then gone on to reading the novels (which had been hard-going at times but had nevertheless turned out to be surprisingly good). As a self-proclaimed nerd herself, Nev’s tastes tended more toward science-fiction but she’d been forced to admit that Tolkien’s most famous works had been an amazing experience for any avid reader. That interest had also developed into a shared love of Game of Thrones, the release of the latest season on cable having been the cause much excitement for both of them.

  Percy’s obsession often flowed over into her daily life. She generally refused to dress in the fashions of the day and seemed to mostly get away with it (as much a reason to envy her as anything else Nev could think of). Dark dresses and carefully-applied make up that might’ve seemed excessively ‘Goth’ or (God forbid) even Emo on someone else, somehow worked for Percy and became something different… a style all her own. Of all the strange little anomalies that somehow made Percy stand out for what a teenager might think were all the wrong reasons however, Nev suspected it was the weird way she looked at people that mostly set them on edge.

  Persephone’s eyes were large and dark, and in low lighting they sometimes appeared completely black – as if she had no irises at all. Whenever she spoke to someone, it seemed her eyes were actually boring straight into their psyche, where she could somehow read every thought and see every dark secret… as if she already knew what that person was thinking. Nev’s dad often joked that boys were usually only thinking about one thing most of the time anyway, so reading their minds probably wasn’t all that difficult. He said that, having been a boy once, he knew what they were generally like, and although Nev hadn’t had much experience with boys at all, she knew that was true enough.

  One of the older boys had dared to ask out Percy the preceding year, but his words had simply trailed off half-way through under the assault of that dark, withering stare. A nickname had been coined not long after: NQR… ‘Not Quite Right’, like that chain of clearance grocery stores that had outlets in the city and up in Morwell. Persephone Koutroulis didn’t like being called ‘Percy’ all that much (although she accepted it from Nev as a symbol of their friendship), but she really hated ‘NQR’. Something as tame as ‘Percy’ paled into insignificance by comparison.

  One thing Honda had been wrong about however had been his assumption that morning that Nev had been spending most of her afternoons over at Percy’s house. Although that might’ve been true once, her friend had been unusually difficult to catch up with over the last few months, something that’d left Nev feeling strangely ill-at-ease and more than a little left out. Her absences had been due to a sudden and completely out-of-character decision to take up bushwalking and bike riding in the surrounding countryside, and the fact that she generally preferred to go alone made the whole thing stranger still.

  “Morning, bitches…” Percy quipped lightly, issuing her customary, cavalier
greeting to anyone within earshot and drawing a few sniggers as she plonked herself down into the empty chair Nev had saved for her.

  She wore one of her standard ensembles; fashionably-expensive Doc Martens beneath a long, figure-hugging dress of dark blue she’d picked up from a charity shop somewhere. It looked like it had been made in the seventies, based on what Nev could see of the fabric’s faded, tie-dye style pattern that was now almost invisible with age, yet somehow – as usual – Percy managed to look a million dollars in it, the effect capped off by a small decorative necklace inlaid with a bright blue, diamond-shaped stone that appeared to be tanzanite or kyanite, if Nev’s recollection of their science geology project served her correctly.

  “Not feeling the love, Persephone…” Kevin Gallagher called softly from the desk behind theirs, childishly emphasising Percy’s name just to be annoying. “How come I don’t get a ‘good morning’…? Don’tcha wanna talk to me…?” Seated together as always, Kevin and his partner in crime, Robbie ‘Dunkin’’ Donat (‘Dunkin’… as in the doughnut franchise, obviously…) were two of the usual suspects in those rare times that there was any kind of trouble or disturbance at school. Most of the other students suspected the only reason the pair hadn’t been suspended or expelled several times in the last six years was because of their family connections within the local council.

  “I was talking to you, biatch…!” She fired back without a moment’s hesitation, turning to fix both of them with a witheringly icy glare that instantly wiped the smug, cheesy grins from both their faces as the pair became the focus of another round of faint laughter.

  “That will be enough of that kind of language, Persephone…” Miss Hoskins warned severely from out front of the class, as she did every time Percy entered the room and made a similar, irreverent declaration upon arrival. She then went about the morning’s French lesson as if nothing had happened, also exactly as she did every other time. “All right, everyone: please open your text books and continue on from where you were up to yesterday. At the end of the class, I’ll be asking each of you to give a brief précis of what you’ve read so far…”